David W. Workman: 

The Editor Who Became A Cop

David W. Workman was a small-town newspaperman with a large involvement in the community he covered for three decades. After he retired from newspapering, he turned to protecting the village, even packing a pistol as he patrolled village streets.

Workman spent 33 years at The Ridgefield Press, many of them as an editor,  changing the newspaper’s focus to solely local news. He also was unafraid to criticize powerful people, as a 1922 racial incident demonstrated.

“He was a staunch and loyal supporter of our town and lent his influence to its growth and progress through critical periods,” The Press said the day after his funeral.

David Whitney Workman was born in Norwalk in 1876, attended private and public schools there, and graduated from Brown Business College in Norwalk. He got his start in newspapers, working for the South Norwalk Sentinel, a weekly founded in 1870. 

In 1900, he joined the staff of The Press, then housed in the Masonic building just south of the Town Hall. He was in charge of what was called the mechanical department — the printing presses and typesetting. Back then the Press also did “job printing” and had both small and large presses to produce a variety of printed documents. 

It was also at a time when most of the type — the backward letters made of metal — were put together by hand, one letter at a time. Under Workman’s subsequent management, a Linotype machine, the company’s first “modern” piece of printing equipment, was installed. The giant, keyboard-controlled machine considerably speeded up the process of producing type.

Workman soon began taking on reporting and writing assignments and became assistant editor  in 1904 under S. Claude O’Connor. He wound up doing most of the writing. When O’Connor left in 1923, Workman took over full control. He ran the paper until it was sold in 1932, staying on for a while to help the new editor and publisher, John A. Thayer.

Under Workman’s reign, The Press became an entirely local newspaper. Before he took control, half of each issue was printed in New York City, filled with national stories, columns, pictures, and ads. The outside pages were written and printed in Ridgefield, then collated with the “boilerplate” pages. By the time he retired, the entire Press was printed in Ridgefield, and all its pages contained local news locally written.

Workman knew the town like few others. Besides covering Ridgefield for the newspaper he was for many years  the clerk of the Board of Finance, clerk of the Board of Education, and  a registrar of voters for the Republican Party. His wife, Edna Innes Workman, was secretary, treasurer at St. Stephen’s Church and superintendent of its Sunday school.

His special interest was Ridgefield’s woodlands and for 17 years, he was the district forest fire warden for the State Department of Forestry, issuing state-mandated burning permits and  overseeing fire prevention measures. Back when Ridgefield was much more rural, it was considered an important office.

“He devoted a great deal of time to the preservation of the beauty of the out-of-doors so often threatened by an expanding urban civilization,” The Press said in its tribute to Workman. “The blanket of pine and hemlock which covered his casket gave testimony that his efforts had not been in vain.”

 After leaving the Press in 1932, he became a town cop. Back in the 1930s, long before the town had its own “real” police department, Ridgefield’s policing was done by the Connecticut State Police, supplemented by town constables, local people who were chosen for that office at town elections — and had been since the early 1700s. Some of those constables were hired as paid employees of the town — one for daytime and one for night — to patrol the village, handle traffic, and deal with other minor offenses. The evening constable was often called the “night watchman.”

However, after the state enacted a new civil service law, the policing job conflicted with his fire prevention post. The state paid fire wardens a stipend of a mere $10 a year, but because it was a payment for an official position, he was considered a state employee; as such he fell under the  newly enacted civil service laws. Those laws forbade state employees from “political activities.” That meant Workman could not hold elective office — even constable.

So in 1937 he retired as forest fire warden (his son, Kenneth, took over) so he could continue as a “night watchman.” 

It turned out to matter little. Workman died the next year, 1938, after a lengthy illness. He was only 62 years old. 

The large crowd that attended his funeral at St. Stephen’s Church included “a squad of state policemen...in uniform,” The Press reported.

That might have been a little surprising to people 16 years earlier. Back in October 1922, The Press ran a fiery, front-page editorial criticizing the state police’s handling of the brutal beating of a black man on Bailey Avenue. 

The incident occurred in September when the inebriated brother of the commander of the Ridgefield state police barracks accosted the black man who was eating at Coleman’s Lunch behind town hall. After entering the diner, Thomas Kelly declared that he didn’t want to eat at the same counter with  “a nigger”  and ordered Robert Cooper to leave. When Cooper refused, Kelly punched him in the face. He then chased Cooper up Bailey Avenue, hit him, knocked him down, and kicked him  before several people finally rescued Cooper and called a doctor.

Several days later Kelly was arrested for assault and breach of the peace, but after a quick trial, was given a $15 fine.

The Press minced no words in expressing its outrage. “A brutal bully makes a most atrocious attack on an inoffensive peaceful man of good reputation, simply because he is a colored man, and he goes unpunished in this town,” an editorial said. “The state police take charge of the arrest and punishment of the bully and do not call Mr. Coleman [the lunch counter owner] or the doctor or any of the witnesses to testify to the assault or the seriousness of the crime so that the justice may know what punishment to inflict.” 

Then, it pointed out that “Thomas Kelly is a brother of John C. Kelly, head of the State Police in this town. Are relatives of the State Police exempt from punishment for crimes? Apparently an investigation should be made by those who appoint and control the State Police.”

Several wealthy townspeople wound up hiring a major New York City lawyer to demand that the Connecticut State Police headquarters in Hartford investigate the incident and its handling. The commissioner of state police said he’d look into it, but the outcome was handled quietly. 

Apparently Lt. John Kelly, the Troop A commander, was not found at fault, for he eventually rose to the position of commander of the entire Connecticut State Police.

Bert Anderson: 

He Died On Duty

Only two Ridgefield police officers have lost their lives while on duty. One of them died in the town hall.

In the days before Ridgefield had its own formal police department, Bert Anderson was the town’s night constable, also called the night watchman, hired to patrol the village mostly on foot during the evening and early morning hours.

Anderson appeared “in excellent spirits” when he stopped by the Ridgefield Bakery at 4 a.m. on Oct. 9, 1939.

A few hours later, workers arriving at the Town Hall found Anderson dead in the constables’ office. He had been shot through the abdomen with his own 41 caliber revolver.

State police from Troop A on East Ridge, led by Lt. Leo F. Carroll and including the medical examiner, Dr. R.W. Lowe, investigated. Based on their findings, county coroner Patrick McIlroy of New Canaan declared that Anderson’s death was accidental.

“Lt. Carroll said Anderson was probably removing his gun belt when the weapon fell to the

floor and discharged,” The Stamford Advocate reported.

 Anderson was 60 years old.

A native of Baltimore, Md.,  Jesse Ebert Anderson was born in 1879 and came to Ridgefield around the turn of the 20th Century. He had been for many years superintendent of Casagmo, the estate of Miss Mary Olcott on Main Street.

In 1905, he married Florence Lillian “Lilly” Whitlock, a local girl. They had two children, including Lyman Ebert Anderson, a longtime Ridgefielder.

Various accounts says Bert Anderson had been chief of the Ridgefield Fire Department, but no record of that could be found. However, his grandson, Rodney A. Anderson, was chief  in 1972-73.

The other ill-fated officer was John Palmer. 

Bill Oexle, 

Master Restorer

“I can’t imagine anybody cold-blooded enough not to appreciate something as beautiful as these things can be,” Bill Oexle told a newspaper reporter in 1976.

The object of his affection was the antique car, and Oexle had spent much of his free time over three decades restoring dozens of them.

William H. Oexle (pronounced OX-lee)  was born in New Jersey in 1908 and came to Ridgefield in 1949 after a career in Ohio where he was sales manager for the Tyson Bearing Corporation. Earlier he had worked in the precision tool field in California and in auto sales and service.

He and his wife, Lina, known as Lee, first lived on Wilton Road West and later on North Salem Road and later way out Ridgebury Road almost in Danbury only later to move back to a home built by their son Sandy Cook in back of their place on North Salem Road. Soon after arriving, he started the Oexle Supply Company, a contractors’ supply business and distributor of nuts, bolts, chain, cable, tools, and other hardware items as well as fire extinguishers. In 1964 he moved his company from the old Ridgefield Bakery building behind what is now the the Planet Pizza/Amatuzzi building to quarters on South Street, built to his specifications. His firm grew and when he sold it in 1973, he was doing business throughout the Northeast as well as Europe and South America.

In 1970 he opened the Taylor Rental Center on South Street and continued to operate that business until his death. 

Oexle was one of the original members of the town’s Police Commission, created in 1955, and was its first chairman.

His greatest love, however, was the restoration of old cars, an avocation he began in 1947. Five years later he was restoring them professionally.

 “It takes a long time to learn how to do it,”  he told the Press in 1979. “The hobby grows and for every man involved in it, some friend of his becomes interested. I would guess there are 200,000 people involved in antique cars.”

He said many restoration hobbyists get started because of fond memories of cars past. “Maybe your father or uncle had a certain kind of car, and you try to find one like it,” he said. “Some people want to get the oldest car they can get — sporty old cars are the ones that appeal to me.”

He said that “old cars give a man an outlet for his desire to use his hands, which he probably doesn’t get in the business world. By the time you have worked on an antique car, doing the mechanical work, perhaps the upholstery, painted it with paint that matches its original coat, you feel that you have put a lot of yourself into it.”

Active in the Horseless Carriage Club of America and the Antique Automobile Club of America, he won many national awards for his restorations. Every car he built that was shown in national competition won an HCCA National First Prize. “He set the standard at the time,” said Rob Kinnaird, who had assisted Oexle in his restorations.

 Several times he was chairman of the Ridgefield Antique Car Show at Veterans Park, which was co-sponsored by the Lions Club for decades and featured up to 200 old vehicles. In fact it was Oexle who convinced the Lions to sponsor the car shows with Horseless Carriage Club of America, starting in 1962. Because of his reputation, many collectors brought their prize restorations to this show. (They were discontinued around 1983 after Veterans Park became unavailable due to the installation of an underground irrigation system that a couple hundred cars could easily damage.)

Over the years Oexle restored such antiques as a 1934 Packard Coupe, 1934 LaSalle Convertible Coupe, 1923 Austro-Daimler Boat Tail Roadster,  1923 Buick Sport Touring Car, 1931 Mercer Raceabout, 1928 Chrysler Roadster, and a 1927 Gardner. His first professional restoration was a 1919 Locomobile; ironically, the last, completed after his death, was a 1920 Locomobile. In the later years, he’d was often assisted by Kinnaird, Guy Montanari and Hiram Scott. Hiram “Scotty” Scott owned Scott’s Autobody in the building off Main Street now occupied by Milillo Farms. 

His favorite car was the late twenties Packard, a number of which he restored, the last one in the late 1970s. “In the 1920s and 30s, I was a service mechanic and sold cars, mostly Packards,” he said in an interview a year before his death in 1980 at the age of 72. “I formed an attachment for 1928s — just to look at them was exciting. A ’28 roadster was a nice auto, handsome, and it performed well.”

“How do you drive a ’28 Packard,”  interviewer Linette Burton asked Oexle.

“Very carefully,” he replied with a smile. “Very carefully.”  

The Shapleys of the School 

Of the many private schools that operated in Ridgefield during the 20th Century, none was quite like the Shapley School. It was a place where wealthy families sent gifted but sometimes undirected children to a estate-like environment that featured tiny classes, sophisticated courses and nightly dinners by candlelight.

Founded by Carl and Virginia Shapley, the sixth-through-12th grade school operated from 1962 until 1967 on the 26-acre grounds of the old Outpost Inn  — now Fox Hill condominiums.

However, its small size and large overhead doomed the operation. And the news that  undercover police found students using drugs did not help efforts to rescue the school.

Carl Betz Shapley was born in 1927 in Cambridge, Mass., a son of the famous Harvard astronomer, Harlow Shapley (who became a member of Shapley School’s board of directors). Carl’s

brother was 2012 Nobel Prize-winning economist Lloyd Shapley. 

Shapley grew up in the intellectual atmosphere of Cambridge where his family’s friends included the likes of Albert Einstein. 

He attended private schools in Cambridge and in Litchfield, Conn., and studied at Harvard and at Principia, a Christian Science college near St. Louis. Considered a gifted musician, he studied in Paris and Vienna before the war for a career as a conductor. However, he wound up after the war working with the National Gallery of Art on identifying and cataloguing rescued works of art that had been stolen by the Nazis. 

After more studies in Europe, including at the Louvre, he turned to teaching, and was an instructor at private schools in Connecticut before establishing The Shapley School with help of wife, Virginia Thayer Shapley, who had been a big-band singer in the 1940s. Mrs. Shapley’s grandmother was one of the founders of Sweet Briar College in Virginia and her mother was the very first student there.

The Shapleys began operating a school in 1962 in New Canaan, where their administrative

offices were. In 1963 they leased and soon purchased the recently closed Outpost Inn on Danbury Road in Ridgefield to establish their campus.

It was no ordinary private school. Shapley featured:

• A student to teacher ratio of 4 to 1.
  
• Availability of instruction in Greek, Latin, French, Chinese, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and German from seventh grade on.
  
• Courses in space biology,  Greek philosophy and drama, geology, Far Eastern history, classical ballet, play production, piano composition, and many other subjects ordinarily found at college level. Students also took Bible classes.
  
• Dinner each night by candlelight in what was once the dining room of an inn where celebrities like Eleanor Roosevelt were served.
  
• A manor in England, ski lodge in Vermont, and a campus in Florence where students could spend vacations or summers in special learning and/or recreation programs. Shapley field trips included two weeks in Greece.
  

 “A 12-year-old can think real thoughts and the point is to create an atmosphere in which he

will produce,” Shapley said in a 1965 interview with the Ridgefield Press. 

He told the Danbury News-Times: “The talent is here in America, but it is wasted and neglected in the mass majority system of education.”

Shapley felt that teaching the Bible along with the many academic and arts-related courses would help establish a “nonsectarian self-discovery of those qualities and principles of respect and love underlying a constructive and dynamic environment.”

A  promotional brochure included among school’s many objectives: 

• “To establish in the hearts and minds of the young people of today a recognition and appreciation of the basic values inherent in a liberal education;
  
• “to re-establish the primacy of deep spiritual thinking;
  
• “to bring fresh insight into new realms for discovery;
  
• “to establish throughout the world a concept of education based upon the acknowledgement of man’s spiritual heritage and unlimited perfectibility.”
  

With a total enrollment that never exceeded 52 students spread over six grades, Shapley School had to charge a relatively high $3,000-a-year tuition — equivalent to about $27,000 today. By 1966, the school was struggling to pay not only its staff of 15 people, but its mortgage.

The school also had to deal with a serious public relations blow. On Dec. 5, 1966, while Carl Shapley was conducting a Bible class, 15 policemen descended on the campus in a drug raid, and wound up arresting two 17-year-old juniors for possessing marijuana and alleged amphetamines. The raid, which made headlines in many newspapers, was the result of an undercover investigation in which at least one especially youthful-looking police officer was posing as a student.

Rumors of the school’s possible closing worried students. “There is nowhere else I can go after this,” one student told a reporter. “This was my last chance to...to...I guess, make it.”

Desperate efforts were underway in the spring of 1967 to save the school — Shapley promised it would open in September. But despite an April fundraising art show and sale that featured works by Picasso, Utrillo and Chagall, the school continued to fall behind in its mortgage payments. A court approved a foreclosure sale at which the high bidder was David Paul, who went on to build Fox Hill condos. Paul, who was building Casagmo at the time, offered $146,500 ($1,093,000 today), far less than the $200,000 ($1.5 million) Shapley said the property was worth.

After the Ridgefield campus closed, the Shapley Schools International maintained a school in Florence for eight years.

The Shapleys then taught and traveled extensively, including in the United Kingdom, India, Greece, and Russia. Carl Shapley promoted the New World Educational Foundation, which he helped found, and was also a fellow of Royal Society of Arts in England.

 In 2005, Virginia Shapley moved to Ridgefield where, in her 80s, she became involved in the community.

“Even at 85, she was amazingly energetic, taking an active role in her new ‘hometown’ — from participating in peace walks to being an administrative assistant for life-enhancing techniques presentations to members of Founders Hall,” said her daughter, Judith Watkins of Hamilton, Mont. 

“She and Carl have had an exciting, exotic life since Ridgefield days and it was a bit ironic

for her to move back there and even to tour the condo development on the grounds of the old school, pointing out to me the preserved features from ‘the old days.’” 

Virginia Shapley died in 2007.

Carl Shapley continued his travels and humanitarian activities. He was a “peace ambassador” in the Universal Peace Federation, based in England, which said at his death, “He has been a longtime supporter of UPF and preceding organisations with the uncanny ability of turning up in the UK at the right  times to support our major activities.”

Late in life he considered himself an ontologist, one who studies the “branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being.”

In 2012 he died at age 84 in Chisinau, Moldova, part of the former Soviet Union, where he is buried.

When the infamous drug raid occurred in 1966, most Shapley students were saddened at the harm it did to their school’s reputation. Several suggested that marijuana use was “more prevalent at the more placid-seeming Ridgefield High School,” one New York City newspaper reported.

A 17-year-old — who had earlier attended the National Cathedral School with President Lyndon Johnson’s daughter, Luci — observed: “Shapley is a trip in itself. You don’t need drugs.”

John F. Haight: 

First Career Policeman

John F. Haight Jr., who led the Ridgefield police for more than 10 years, was probably the town’s first career policeman.

Over a period of 30 years,  Haight rose from constable to chief and saw the police force grow from three to 30 officers. “He was one of the moving forces to get us from the town hall basement to where we are now," said Richard Ligi, who joined the department under Haight and later became its chief.

A native of Newburgh, N.Y., John Haight was born in 1920 and moved to Ridgefield as a child, attending classes in the old Titicus Schoolhouse, now the American Legion Hall. He graduated in 1938 from Ridgefield High School where he met his future wife, Marion Alice Roberts. The two were married in 1942; Mrs. Haight died in 1998.

During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army's Fourth Armored Regiment under General Patton, landing in Europe shortly after D-Day and receiving the Bronze Star for heroism.

One of his first jobs after the war was as an usher at the old Ridgefield Playhouse movie theater on Prospect Street. He also worked for the U.S. Post Office, driving bags of mail from the office on Main Street to meet the train in Branchville.

In 1947, he was hired as a policeman — then officially called a constable — joining Charles Wade Walker and James Brady in policing the town under the command of the first selectman and operating out of  70-square-foot “quarters” in the town hall. Constables handled motor vehicle violations and misdemeanors while the State Police, quartered at the barracks on East Ridge, did the major cases.

“In those days, we patrolled in our own cars,” the chief recalled. “We had no car, no radio, no equipment, no nothing.” The town bought its first patrol car around 1950.

In 1955, Ridgefield created a formal police department, with James Brady as chief, and John Haight was among the first officers. Ten years later, Chief Haight took command of the 10-person department, serving until his retirement in 1977 after 30 years on the job — a tenure   few others have attained with the police force.

During his nearly 12 years as chief, the department grew threefold to 30 officers, added a detective bureau, and moved from a few rooms in the town hall basement into its current quarters, the former State Police barracks, on East Ridge.

“In all humility, I believe I have turned over a police department to my successor of which you, the community, will be proud,” he said at his testimonial in 1977. 

Some 250 people attended that farewell party. “It is amazing that a man with a name like Haight can represent so much love,” emcee Paul Baker said at the event.

“He was always fair with his people and always concerned with their welfare,” said Chief Richard Ligi, who was hired as a teenaged clerk by Chief Haight in 1967.

Chief Haight’s first home here was on Washington Avenue, but in the early 1970s he built a house at the north end of Lake Mamanasco. After his retirement, he moved to Cape Cod, but returned periodically for visits and to host testimonials — after he stepped down as chief, he became a celebrated toastmaster, enjoyed for his wry wit. One of the last formal affairs he attended was a retirement banquet for Thomas Rotunda, who had succeeded him as chief.

He died in 2002 at the age of 82 and is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery. 

Israel Grossfeld: 

The Crusading Father

Nineteen-year-old Fred Grossfeld was a quiet, scholarly student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a sophomore majoring in mathematics. Slight in build, the Ridgefielder loved books and spent many hours in libraries. 

 One November night in 1965, Fred played bridge with three friends in a dormitory where his

own room was located. After the game ended, he said goodnight and left. He was never seen alive again.

The tragic case of Fred Grossfeld, which made headlines locally and nationally for weeks, sparked his father, Ridgefield merchant Israel Grossfeld, to undertake a campaign that eventually helped change how law enforcement officials in the United States deal with missing persons. 

Fred Grossfeld vanished on the evening of Nov. 30, 1965, but it was two days before MIT campus police learned he was missing. Campus police then spent several days either waiting for news or looking into his whereabouts before finally notifying his parents on Dec. 6, nearly a week later.

“We found the delays shocking; the university found them routine,”  Israel Grossfeld told MIT’s president eight months later. Indeed, when Israel Grossfeld had earlier approached an MIT spokesman about publicizing his missing son in the Boston newspapers, he was told, “It isn’t a story. Kids disappear every day. This isn’t news.”

“Then I’ll make it a story,” Grossfeld shot back.

In the weeks that followed, Israel Grossfeld undertook a tireless campaign to publicize the disappearance of his son who he believed had been accosted by robbers or was suffering from amnesia. He knocked on doors of police stations, politicians’ offices, and media newsrooms. Headlines began appearing across the country — The New York Times carried at least four stories.

Fred Grossfeld’s disappearance was mysterious. There was no sign of anything amiss. His room was found in perfect condition. Except for an olive-green raincoat, nothing was missing; even his watch was still sitting on his desk.

The young man was described as a “very quiet, studious boy, who spent most of his time reading and studying,” The Ridgefield Press reported Dec. 9. “He rarely left the MIT campus. He played chess and Ping Pong in addition to bridge.” 

His father discounted rumors that he was having trouble in school, noting his son had a 4.8 grade point average of a possible 5. “His only weak subject was physical education,” Israel Grossfeld told The Times.

The FBI briefly investigated in December after Israel received a ransom call from someone, demanding $3,000 for Fred’s return and telling the father to wait the next day near five pay phones at the corner of Tremont and Boylston Streets in Boston. Grossfeld called authorities, and the next day, Boston police and the FBI staked out the area as Grossfeld waited at the corner. No call came.

Grossfeld said at the time that he believed the caller never contacted him because news of the call and stakeout appeared in Boston media the night before. “I fear that because I did not follow the caller’s advice to not contact the authorities, they might have killed Fred,” he said.

When nothing materialized, the FBI dropped out of the case. 

However, national law enforcement officials began to take more notice after Grossfeld pursued politicians like U.S. Senators Abraham Ribicoff (D-Connecticut) and Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), who in turn pressured U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to personally review the merits of the case. In early February, Katzenbach wound up ordering the FBI to resume the search for the boy.

A native of Poland who was persecuted as a Jew by the Nazis, Israel Grossfeld had come to this country in 1949 with only $8 to his name. He eventually opened I. Grossfeld Ltd., a top-drawer men’s clothing store on Main Street. 

As he worked to find his son, he virtually walked away from the business — many people in the community, including an airline pilot and the owner of a competing store — volunteered to work at Grossfeld’s shop while the father searched for his son. Scores of Ridgefielders also helped him send thousands of missing-person flyers all over the county — even to hundreds of libraries, because Fred had been such a book-lover. 

“If it takes all of my life, this is my No. 1 job — to find the boy, nothing else,” he told The Times. 

The search came to an end on Feb. 8, 1966. A Beacon Street woman was walking her dog along the Esplanade of the Charles River in Boston, when the pet broke loose, ran about 15 feet out onto the frozen river and began barking. Embedded in the ice was the body of Fred Grossfeld. 

Boston police reported that, except for his olive-green raincoat, he was clad entirely in black clothing, including a black shirt and black tie. Investigators found no evidence of foul play.

His father was crushed. He could barely do more than nod his head when he came to the police mortuary to identify the body. He had been in Boston to meet with Cardinal Richard Cushing to enlist his aid in the search campaign.

How did Fred Grossfeld wind up frozen in the Charles River? An autopsy found that the boy had drowned. There was speculation that he had committed suicide by jumping off a bridge over the Charles River, but in a letter to The Press on Feb. 15, Israel Grossfeld and his wife, Mina, wrote: “We are sure to our innermost soul that Freddie was not a suicide. He once expressed himself specifically on the subject, saying that only ‘sick’ people did such a thing. He could not inflict pain on anyone or anything, and certainly not on himself.”

Instead, the Grossfelds said, “we believe that Freddie met with foul play, whether from a gang of delinquents roaming the streets or from someone out of the vast hate world we shall probably never know.” 

The week after the discovery, Israel Grossfeld told The Press, “I am not going to let the files be closed. If the police don’t care to pursue the case, I will pursue it myself. This is something that I feel I must do for the memory of my boy and for my own peace of mind.”

Grossfeld returned to the MIT campus to try to determine whether school and police officials were making any effort to solve the mystery. He was accompanied by author Max Gunther and photographer Joseph Consentino, both Ridgefielders, who had been assigned by the Saturday Evening Post magazine to cover the story. 

Gunther, who had already spent three days interviewing Fred’s dormitory neighbors as well as campus officials, told The Press on Feb. 16 that he “found no evidence that Fred was unhappy or worried in the weeks before his disappearance. Furthermore, Fred’s friends recalled that the brilliant young scholar had always shunned physical violence and was extremely sensitive to pain, cold and other discomfort.

“If Fred was going to commit suicide,” Gunther said, “it seemed unlikely to his friends that he would choose such an agonizing method as jumping into an icy river and drowning.”

By the spring of 1966, Israel Grossfeld had recovered enough to focus on a new campaign: The creation of a federal agency handling missing persons.

“We need what a number of other countries already have: A federal bureau for missing persons, under the FBI,” Grossfeld wrote Senator Ribicoff in July. “In the areas of taxation, water control, education, and movement of traffic, we have gained immeasurably by the unity and coordination of federal control. Why not in personal safety?”

He had already complained to the MIT president, “It is unfortunate that disappearances of college students are each treated as a common, routine matter. In most cases they probably do present no cause for concern, but this results in tragedy for the few exceptions that do occur.” 

He felt that MIT should have been more diligent in dealing with Fred’s disappearance and should have notified area police and the parents immediately. “We shall probably never know whether this entirely usual lack of communication made the difference between life and death,” he told the MIT president.

Grossfeld found a supporter in Senator Ribicoff, who had earlier been governor of the Connecticut. In 1967, Ribicoff introduced a bill to create a federal office to help local police departments to find missing persons. It would, as The Times reported, “set up a separate investigative staff within the Justice Department concerned solely with missing persons…. The staff would assist directly in investigations if requested to do so by local policemen…The office would also serve as a national clearinghouse for information on missing persons, using modern computer technology to collect and store information from all over the country.”

Such an agency would no doubt be overloaded, unless it had thousands of staff members. But the federal government did institute the National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, whose huge databases include not only criminals, but also missing and unidentified persons. Today, up to 12 million searches a day are done by law enforcement agencies, using NCIC. Many of those are for missing persons.

But as a result of the efforts of Israel Grossfeld and others, significant improvements in dealing with missing persons have been made. “Many police departments used to wait 24 to 48 hours before accepting a missing persons report,” said current Ridgefield Police Chief John Roche. “No more.”

Grossfeld had argued that any delay in searching for the missing makes the job tougher. Chief Roche agreed. In Ridgefield and in Connecticut in general, missing persons now get instant attention. 

“The longer you wait, the less you have the ability to find the person,” Chief Roche said. While many missing persons cases may involve miscommunications or domestic spats, “you just don’t know,” he said.

Ridgefield police even plan for missing persons. One of the more frequent types of missing persons is an Alzheimer’s patient, who may wander off and get lost. The department maintains a database of dementia victims, with information voluntarily supplied by caregivers, so that such vital details as photos, physical descriptions, and habits can be quickly called up at headquarters.

Israel Grossfeld was active in the 1970s in supporting youth programs, particularly the Ridgefield Boys’ Club. For many years the Fred Grossfeld Memorial Fund provided scholarships for Ridgefield High School graduates. 

Grossfeld sold his store and his Stonecrest Road home in 1980, the same year his wife, Mina, a teacher of Russian, died. He remarried, eventually moved to Israel, and then to Florida, where he became active in the state chapter of the Friends of Israeli Disabled Veterans. 

He died in 2013 at the age of 91.

James J. Brady: 

First Police Chief

For most of the first half of the 20th Century, Ridgefield’s police protection was provided by state troopers, supplemented by a few town constables and deputy sheriffs. The constabulary, whose members dressed like policemen of the day, were led by the first selectman, who functioned as the police chief.

In 1955, the town voted to create a “real” police department, with a real police chief, all overseen by an elected Police Commission. James Brady was chosen its first chief.

James Joseph Brady Jr. was born in 1896 in nearby North Salem, N.Y. His parents moved to Ridgefield early in the century, and Brady grew up here, attending local schools.

As a young man Brady — affectionately known as “Diamond Jim” — worked for automobile garages, both as a mechanic and as a livery driver. After the U.S. entered World War I, he joined the U.S. Army medical corps in August 1918 and was sent to France where he served under fire on the Alsace Front. 

Back in Ridgefield, he continued working for garages, but in 1928 entered law enforcement, becoming a part-time town constable. In those days, only one constable was on duty during the day and one in the evening; Brady got the night shift.

Three years later, he became a deputy county sheriff, serving until 1935. In his favorite case he helped state police stake out an often-burglarized Georgetown store and capture the thief. He and a trooper spent 22 nights in Connery’s Store until finally, on the 23rd night at 3:30 a.m., the fellow came in through a jimmied window to make his haul. The burglar turned out to be stealing goods to trade for bathtub liquor, and wound up leading police to two Branchville bootleggers. The bootleggers wound up in prison and were later both killed in a Long Island gang war. 

In the late 1930s, Brady served as an inspector for the motor vehicles department. During World War II, he worked as a fire inspector at the Remington Arms Company in Bridgeport where he rose to the rank of lieutenant.

Brady became a full-time town constable in 1946, handling parking, traffic and minor

violations, and working out of a “closet” in the town hall, he later recalled. There was “very little vandalism and no domestic trouble at all,” he said in 1975. An occasional burglary would occur, but crime was “nothing like it is today.” 

When the town voted in 1955 to establish a formal police department, he became the first chief and got the fledgling force on its feet. It was a small department with only one patrol car, and despite his being chief, his duties included directing traffic on Main Street. 

Brady retired in 1965 due to poor health, but worked part-time for 10 years as the Martin

Park guard. He was also a longtime member of the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department. He died in 1976 at the age of 79.

While Ridgefield was not a high-crime area in the 50s and early 60s,   it did have a good bit of traffic. In that interview the year before he died, Brady said his biggest problem as a policeman were the motorists who failed to use directional signals.

“I’m out there trying to help them, you know, and keep them from cracking up,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll wave a car straight ahead and find out that the driver is making a turn — and almost causing an accident.”

Richard Ligi: 

Youth and the Chief

For Richard Ligi, working for the Ridgefield Police was virtually a lifetime affair. He  joined the department in 1967 as a clerk, too young even to carry a gun. He wound up being its fourth chief.

A Ridgefield native, Richard Joseph Ligi was born in 1947, attended the town’s schools, and was a 1965 graduate of Ridgefield High School. Although his father, Navio, was a well-known baseball player in his day and he himself became a popular youth baseball coach, Ligi did not play baseball in high school and instead worked after school at Wayside Market to earn money to go to college.

He went to Post College in Waterbury, majoring in business, and in 1967, got a job as the civilian clerk for the Ridgefield Police Department, then housed in the basement of the town hall. “That piqued my interest in police work,” he said in a 1999 interview.

While working at the department, he continued his college studies,  juggling that with service in the Connecticut National Guard.  He became an auxiliary policeman — able to do traffic details — in 1968. But it wasn’t until 1969, after he had turned 21 and was able to carry a gun, that he was sworn in as a full-time police officer. One of the few on the department to hold a college degree at the time, he had also graduated first in his class of 30 at the Connecticut Police Academy.

 From there promotions came steadily: to sergeant in 1977, lieutenant in 1980, captain in 1990, and major in 1996. When Chief Thomas Rotunda retired in 1999, the Police Commission unanimously chose Major Ligi as the town’s fourth police chief, the second one to be a native son, and the only one whose entire working career was spent in the department.

 Chief Ligi was especially noted and praised for his involvement with youth. He coached sports

teams, and helped develop anti-drinking and drug programs such as Party Patrols and Cops and Shops; the former cracked down on “keg parties” and the latter uses underground police as liquor store clerks.

He knew first-hand the tragedy that can come from drinking and driving. His son, Rick, a student at the University of Rhode Island, was one of two young men killed when the car in which they were passengers crashed on North Street in 1995. The 19-year-old driver had drunk six cans of beer before the accident; he spent two and a half years in prison. 

Rick Ligi had been a star pitcher at URI which, for many years, has presented the Rick Ligi MVP Award to its top players. His baseball number 8 at URI was retired after his death. In Ridgefield, Chief Ligi and his wife, Dale Tulipani Ligi, established the Rick Ligi Memorial Scholarship,  presented annually to a Ridgefield High School senior baseball player going to college.

Ligi also worked to improve how youth viewed the police. He expanded the involvement of the youth officer in the schools and their students, and proposed the “school resource officer” who could work with kids at the high school daily. 

“Relationships create better rapport, and that rapport may help kids better understand what we’re doing,” Ligi said.

Ligi’s work with young people began in the 1980s when he coached Little League teams. He went on to coach Babe Ruth baseball, Nutmeg Games teams, and the Nighthawks, a summer baseball league team for high school and college kids.  His Nutmeg Games teams were 18-0 over the years and won three gold medals; the Nighthawks teams won the regionals and got to the sectionals twice.

“He just had a lot of respect for the kids,” said Tony Pisano, who helped coach the Nighthawks. “He made sure everybody played and he knew all of the kids and what were their strengths. That's what made the team successful. He was all about everybody; it was the whole team all the time. I'm sure he did the same thing with the police department.”

Ligi died of a stroke in 2008. He was only 60 years old. His funeral at St. Mary’s was so crowded that more than 100 people had to listen to the service outdoors.

 “We can call him ‘the just man’,” Msgr. Laurence Bronkiewicz said, referring to one of the readings during the funeral Mass. “His whole life was devoted to justice.”

"His dedication to his work was phenomenal," said John Roche, who succeeded Ligi as chief. "He just loved to come to work.

"He was proud of his men, that's what he was proudest of — to see them do a good job and contribute to the community."

Longtime friends like Chip Landon admired Ligi's quick wit, often served up with a grin, though sometimes he preferred the deadpan approach. “He was thinking all the time,” Landon told The Ridgefield Press, “whether to help you out with a problem or to give you a zinger.”

Peter J. Wick: 

Artist, Athlete and Advocate

Peter Wick seemed like a man of contrasts.  Tall and burly, he was a former boxer and champion wrestler who became a prolific artist, painting countless scenes of the Connecticut countryside, the New England shoreline, old sailing ships, and tropical islands.

What’s more, Wick was also a veteran New York City police sergeant who, as both a cop and a Ridgefield prosecutor,  was an advocate of intelligent treatment of wayward teenagers.

Peter John Wiczkowski was born in New York City in 1902, the son of immigrants from

Poland. (As a young man, he shortened his name to Wick.) After working as s store clerk, he joined the New York Police Department in 1924. But he was also deeply involved in athletics.

“Peter Wick was a great sports figure who enjoyed wrestling and boxing,” said his family on a website created in his memory. “He sparred with famous boxers such as Jack Dempsey and worked with Gene Tunney at the West Side YMCA in New York City. He coached young boxers and one of his best-known pupils was middleweight champion, Rocky Graziano.

“Mr. Wick later became the national amateur wrestling champ of the U.S., going on to win four AAU medals.”

He continued to box as late as 1947 in police leagues.

Wick passed on his love of those sports to city kids. In the 1920s, he became one of the

organizers of what was to become the Police Athletic League, which still provides many programs for New York’s youth.

Wick became interested in art in the 1930s, and eventually studied painting under  Howard Chandler Christy, a noted portrait artist, and Gordon Grant, who famous for his maritime scenes. In a 1945 Christy mural, which depicted negotiations between the United States government and the American Indians, Wick modeled as an Indian chief. The mural is in the Ohio State Rotunda.

When he and his wife, Henrietta, and family moved to Ned’s Mountain Road in 1940, that wild area of Ridgebury helped foster a love of nature and the countryside, and inspired many of his paintings.

He retired from the NYPD in 1953 after 29 years.  He wasn’t rich, said his grandson, Bert Fortin. His pension at the time was about $500 a month. So to bring in extra money, he began selling his paintings at shows throughout the area. In 1959 he opened a gallery on White Street in Danbury.

He later had a studio in Westport.

    Some of his paintings sold for as much as $300 ($2,700 today), helping considerably with the retirement income.

    In the 1950s Wick became involved in town government, serving as a grand juror. In 1959, he was appointed a prosecutor in the town’s Trial Justice Court, a job that wound up sparking some controversy a year later when a case he was prosecuting against two teenagers had to dropped for lack of a complaint. 

    The youths had been caught with an automobile distributor they’d stolen from a wrecked car parked at Pamby Motors. The police arrested the boys, but the owner of the wrecked car refused to press charges — a fact that Wick did not know until the last moment. Carleton   Scofield promptly quit as town justice, complaining that Wick had not properly prepared the case and maintaining that prosecutors should be attorneys. The two had argued over prosecutions in the past. 

Wick also resigned. He said that he had not gotten timely information from the police, but also did not want any further clashes with Scofield. Scofield immediately returned to his job.

However, the case also involved how tough the town should be on teenagers. Scofield was upset that the teenagers got off scot free but Wick — who had spent many years helping young people in New York City — took a different tack, saying he did not believe in being “too harsh on

young first offenders who commit misdemeanors.” A police record, he said, can considerably affect a boy’s future school and job opportunities.

In an interview in the Bridgeport Post, Wick favored reorganizing how the police handled youth cases, feeling that the police should be encouraged to “adjudicate instead of arrest,” The Post said.

 “Ridgefield is growing, and modern methods must replace some of the outmoded ones,” Wick said. “A good policeman doesn’t arrest everybody brought to his attention.” 

He recommended that the town name a committee or commission to deal with teenagers before and after they commit minor offenses.

In 1984, Wick retired to Lakeland, Fla., bringing along with him a truckload of paintings he had done in Ridgefield. He died five years later at the age of 87.

In 2015, his family offered 200 of Wick’s paintings to Lighthouse Ministries, which  provides food, clothing, shelter, and various programs to the homeless communities of Central Florida. Lighthouse scheduled an auction of his paintings that year that raised more than $16,000.

Note: A 29-page color catalogue of his paintings can be viewed here: https://issuu.com/eringeiger/docs/charity_art_catalog

Charles Wade Walker: 

Happy, Musical & Armed

Music was Charles Wade Walker’s first love and primary profession, but this prominent, many-faceted Ridgefielder also ran a magical Main Street store that entertained a generation of kids and adults. So Walker doesn’t seem quite like the kind of fellow who’d be a pistol-packing leader of a posse, and perhaps he should not have been.

Born in 1880, the Albany, N.Y., native came here in 1910 after having been an organist in several New York City churches. Over the years he was music supervisor for the schools, a tenor in the Ridgefield Male Quartet, organist and choirmaster at the Jesse Lee Methodist Church, a piano tuner, conductor of the St. Cecile Choral Society, and a trumpet player in the Ridgefield Band.

For many years he operated Walker’s Happy Shop on Main Street, a popular newspaper and novelty store. The sign in the front said, “Toys to make the kiddies happy, sweets to make the ladies happy, and smokes to make the men happy.” 

In 1917, when he installed a soda fountain, he put up a window shade with the sign, “Meet me here at the fountain.”

Walker was also a justice of the peace and town constable, long before Ridgefield had its own formal police department. It was, perhaps,  a job for which the musician and merchant was not always well suited, as evidenced by the story told by Town Historian Richard E. Venus in a 1987 “Dick’s Dispatch” column in The Ridgefield Press. 

It was in mid-winter one evening in the 1930s when Irene Zwierlein heard a noise in the

basement of her Barry Avenue home. Her husband, Joe, was attending a meeting in town, and she was alone in the house. “She opened the kitchen door that led to the basement and there, in the darkness, was the outline of a man,” wrote Venus. “The man hurled a rubber boot at Irene and then fled out the back door of the basement.

“Irene quickly recovered and soon had the police, in the person of Charles Wade Walker, on the scene. Word spread quickly through the neighborhood and soon a posse of neighbors was organized. It was led by a very nervous, part-time policeman.

“The trail of the intruder was easy to follow as there was a light, freshly fallen snow….The tracks led north through the fields to Ramapoo Road and an old hay barn that had a ground floor basement. The barn was part of Irving Conklin’s dairy farm and while the upper part of the barn was used to store hay, the basement sheltered a dozen young heifers that Irving used to winter there.

“The basement doors were always left open, in order that the herd of heifers would have easy access to the tiny pond where they got their water. The tracks of the culprit led directly to the open barn door.

“At this point, a decision had to be made: Do you barge into the barn or do you wait for the quarry to come out? Perhaps this is a good time to explain that the officer carried a gun, but, as he said later, he was terrified at the thought of ever having to use it. In fact, he said that he had never used it, even in practice.

“By now the posse had grown to a considerable size and they wanted some action. The man had managed to enter the barn without disturbing the heifers and they remained quietly in their shelter.

“However, at the approach of this small army, led by Charles Wade, a distinct rumble could be heard. Just as they reached the door, the herd, probably encouraged by the man, stampeded out the barn. Several people were knocked flat, including the officer, whose gun went off harmlessly into the air.

“The heifers raced across the open field, with the perpetrator keeping pace in their midst. He sure could run and with all the tracks made by the crowd, it was impossible to follow him.

“Several people thought they knew who he was, but positive identification could not be made and he got away scot-free.”

Walker may not have like toting a gun, but he was probably more knowledgeable than most about the law; before he came Ridgefield, he had studied law in New York City. His knowledge was put to use as a prosecutor in the town Justice Court. He was also a village traffic officer from 1938 to 1951,  and a volunteer fireman. And if that wasn’t enough, he belonged to the Masons, Odd Fellows, Lions, and the Grange — and contributed poetry to The Press.

He continued to live in Ridgefield until about a year before his death in a Hartford nursing home in 1961 on the eve of his 81st birthday.

John C. Kelly: 

State’s Top Law Enforcer

John Kelly was a prime example of “local boy makes good.” He joined the Connecticut State Police when it was tiny but suddenly expanding agency, and wound up three decades later as head  of the entire state police force.

One of eight children, John Cornelius Kelly was born in Ridgefield in 1895. His paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Kelly, were among the first Catholic families to settle here. 

When World War I broke out, he enlisted in the Navy and served on submarine chasers. 

Around 1920, he joined the state motor vehicle patrol, a motorcycle unit that enforced laws dealing with the increasingly popular automobiles, but more particularly, the increasing dangerous trucks. In 1921, the motor vehicle patrol became part of the rapidly expanding Connecticut State Police. 

The state police had been established in 1903, but had only five men covering all of Connecticut. The force wasn’t much larger than that by 1920, but the enactment of Prohibition that year meant a manifold increase in the need for law enforcement, particularly in Connecticut’s smaller towns.

Consequently, the state police force was greatly expanded, and “barracks” or local sub-stations established around the state. (Stations were called “barracks” because troopers ate and slept in them for shifts of five or six days.)

Kelly was quickly recognized as a leader and, in 1922, he was promoted to sergeant and given command of the new Ridgefield barracks, located on West Lane. In 1927 the barracks moved to a larger building on East Ridge Road — what’s now the Ridgefield Police headquarters.

By 1931, Kelly was instruction officer for the whole state and in 1945, he was made a major and executive officer of the state police department. Four years later, he was named chairman of the State Liquor Control Commission. 

In 1953, Governor John Lodge appointed him commissioner of the Connecticut State Police,

the equivalent of a chief of police, a command he held until 1955. He might have held the office longer, but Kelly was a Republican and by then the governor, who made the appointments, was Abraham Ribicoff, a Democrat.
After his retirement, he served several terms as a state representative from Ridgefield to the Legislature. After that, he worked as a legislative consultant until he was 82. He died in 1984 at the age of 88, still living in the town in which he was born.

In a bit of irony, two of the leading law enforcement officials in the state during the 40s and 50s lived next door to each other on Wilton Road West:  Kelly’s next door neighbor was Leo F. Carroll, who became second in command of the state police when Kelly was commissioner. Both started out together at Troop A when the barracks was on West Lane, and rose through the ranks — with Kelly always one step ahead.